med like a Greek bishop's
staff, from the two horns of which several little round bells are
suspended by a silver chain. The chaoush is a personage of great
authority in certain things; he is a kind of living firman, before whom
every one makes way. As I was desirous of seeing the shrine of the heads
of Hassan and Hussein in the mosque of Hassan En, a place of peculiar
sanctity at Cairo, into which no Christian had been admitted, the Pasha
sent a chaoush with me, who concealed the head of his staff in his
clothes, to be ready, in case it had been discovered that I was not a
Mahomedan, to protect me from the fury of the devotees, who would
probably have torn to pieces any unbeliever who intruded into the temple
of the sons of Ali.

Besides these two officers, the chaoush and kawass, there is another
attendant upon public men, who is of inferior rank, and is called a
yassakji, or forbidder; he looks like a dirty kawass, and has a stick,
but without the silver knob. He is generally employed to carry messages,
and push people out of the way, to make a passage for you through a
crowd; but this kind of functionary is more frequently seen at
Constantinople and the northern parts of Turkey than in Egypt.

We found Boghos Bey in a large upper room, seated on a divan with two or
three persons to whom he was speaking, while the lower end of the room
was occupied by a crowd of chaoushes, kawasses, and hangers-on of all
descriptions. We were served with coffee, pipes, and sherbet, and were
entertained during the pauses of the conversation by the ticking and
chiming of half a dozen clocks which stood about the room, some on the
floor, some on the side-tables, and some stuck on brackets against the
wall.

One of the persons seated near the prime minister was a shrewd-looking
man with one eye, of whom I was afterwards told the following anecdote.
His name was Walmas; he had been an Armenian merchant, and was an old
acquaintance of Mohammed Ali and of Boghos, before they had either of
them risen to their present importance. Soon after the massacre of the
Mamelukes, Mohammed Ali desired Boghos to procure him a large sum of
money by a certain day, which Boghos declared was impossible at so short
a notice. The Pasha, angry at being thwarted, swore that if he had not
the money by the day he had named, he would hare Boghos drowned in the
Nile. The affrighted minister made every effort to collect the requisite
sum, but when the day arrived